Don't Starve: Adventure Mode
by StarbrightAngel123
Summary: A novelization of Adventure Mode. Follow Wilson as he desperately tries to survive in his strange new world. Rated T for language. Cover art belongs to the incredibly talented ZombiDJ on DeviantArt.
1. Chapter 1: Maxwell's Door

Three days.

Could it really have only been three days? I was certain there had only been three rotations of the sun, and it seemed time moved just the same as it did in the real world - if there had ever been a real world to begin with.

"No, no, no. Stop thinking like that, Wilson. You can't give up hope already."

And yet, even though I knew that day and night had only cycled through three times, it seemed like it had been so much longer. Weeks. Months, even. So much had happened already, in this strange new dimension. I'd been living off of berries, carrots (somehow growing naturally in the ground, not in any cultivated farmland?), and roasted birchnuts. I'd seen brown rabbits with little curled black horns and round white eyes, completely lacking pupils. I'd found a thickly woven nest of spider silk, as big as I was, and seen arachnids the size of cats crawl from it. I'd spotted a beehive sitting on the ground, and watched as honeybees large as my own hand buzzed around nearby flowers.

And now... this.

The door was here. _My_ door. No-not mine, Maxwell's door, but the one I had created for him, with my own hands, sealing my own fate. Sitting innocently out in a field of grass, silent and unmoving. Until I had approached it.

It opened, then (as I jumped back in shock), revealing a swirling red vortex.

My initial thought was that I could go home. Certainly it would take me back; it had taken me inside to this new dimension.

But no, of course not, that had been foolish to even consider. It couldn't possibly be that easy. Maxwell wouldn't have had me build the damn door and brought me to this hell if he intended to just let me go.

The man was far too sinister. I knew he was. I had felt it in his presence, while he loomed over me, and I blinked groggily up at his tall figure in the grass, a cigar hanging from his too-pale lip. _"Say, pal..."_ he'd said to me, _"you don't look so good. You better find something to eat before night comes."_

His voice was mocking, chiding me for being so easily fooled, so easily manipulated, and I hated him almost as much as I hated myself. And I had felt the wickedness in him. It had sunken into my very soul, turned my blood to ice, filled my heart with pins and needles. Even long after he'd miraculously vanished - though that was the least surprising thing, after everything that'd happened prior - the cold had stayed with me, and I'd jumped at any little noise or movement.

No. This door would not take me home. It would probably take me to another dimension, even more nightmarish than this one.

"I'm not sure I want to fall for that a second time..."

I'd taken up the habit of talking to myself. It was probably a sign of growing insanity. But, it made me feel better, damn it, and if there was no one in this entire world that I could talk to, I may as well talk to myself.

I was used to dealing with loneliness, cooped up in my shack. But there was a town, outside of the woods I resided in. There were people there. Here... there was nothing.

"No. I'm sure this is another trap. He wants me to think this will take me home. I need to find more food before dark."

I nodded at myself. "Yes, good thinking."

"Let's go, then."

But I stayed. Watching the door, nervously eyeing the spinning vortex, standing quiet, waiting. Waiting for _what_ , exactly, I didn't know.

"What could be worse than spiders as big as cats?" I mused. "Perhaps this will take me to another part of this world. With more food."

"I suppose I have nothing to lose. It won't kill me, I'm sure. He would have killed me a long time ago if he wanted me dead."

"Quite right..."

My legs were quivering under me. I was a _scientist,_ not an adventurer. I didn't like danger, life-threatening circumstances. I liked to learn. Quietly. In the confines of my safe little shack.

But at my very core, I was curious. And you know what they say: curiosity killed the cat.

"Perhaps it also kills cat-sized spiders."

Fingers trembling, I reached for the door, and flipped the switch. I was expecting the door to open up fully, so I could step into the swirling mist inside, and it would take me wherever it was that the door lead to.

What I was _not_ expecting was for two long, thin, shadowy hands to spring up from the ground, reaching for my legs. In hindsight, this is what had happened the last time, so I probably shouldn't have been so surprised.

I gasped, choked on air, as I tried to run away but was once again too slow.

"No..."

Grabbed by the ankles, dragged back on my stomach, kicking and screaming.

"No!"

Pulled down, sinking right through the ground, my vision fading as I fell, shrieking, twisting, struggling in vain. I wondered if I was dreaming, revisiting the night I had made that fatal mistake.

"PLEASE, MOTHER OF _GOD,_ NOT _AGAIN!"_

But my screams were lost in the darkness.


	2. Update (Author's Note)

**A/N:** Hi there, readers! (If there _is_ anyone out there reading my stories...) Apologies for the lack of updates. It's summer now, so I'll have lots more free time, and I'm going to try to work regularly on this fanfic. I'm rather dissatisfied with any YouTube videos I've found of Adventure Mode, so I'll play it myself to continue this novelization. At least, until I die. Then I'll default back to YouTube. (I consider myself a very talented Don't Starve player, and I've still never gotten past Chapter 2 of AM.) I'm definitely familiar enough with the game to write a story without watching actual gameplay or playing it myself, but I thought it'd be more interesting to do so.

I'm going to boot up the game now and get to work. Chapter 2 of this fic should be up soon, my lovelies!

-Star


	3. Chapter 2: The Game is Afoot

**Chapter 2: The Game is Afoot**

"Oh, you found my portal, did you?"

I moaned out in confusion, and ended up with a mouthful of grass and snow. I turned onto my back, spat onto the ground, and blinked up at the tall man in front of me.

The tall man... in front of me?

 _Please, God in heaven, no._

"You'd think you would have learned your lesson by now," Maxwell continued.

He was wrapped in a long, striped, violet overcoat, with heavy white fur at the collar. His hair was slicked back as usual, face pale, eyes sunken-in deep beneath his brows. No cigar, actually; his hands were tucked behind his back. Unless he was holding it behind him? But I smelled nothing, only grass and dirt.

"Hmm..." He leaned forward, face sneering. "Let's try something a little more challenging, shall we?"

I was too horrified to respond, and then he was gone, vanishing down into the ground with a puff of black smoke. I groaned to myself. I didn't hurt, but my head was fuzzy, and it would take a minute or two to clear. That was what happened the first time, at least.

It's also probably worth noting that I was _cold._ Like, _really cold._ Not fatally cold yet, but there was a chill wind in the air and patches of snow on the ground, and I was wearing nothing but my thin red button-up. At least I had my gloves.

As I slowly rose to my feet and waited for the world to stop spinning, I thought over Maxwell's words.

 _Let's try something a little more challenging, shall we?_

"More challenging than trying not to starve to death and avoiding mutated insects?" I grumbled, dusting myself off.

I turned, and immediately my eyes fell on some kind of small contraption, placed in a little stand. I frowned at it, tilted my head left and right. How odd it was. It had a jagged handle - a handle? - yes, it appeared to be something that you were supposed to hold and carry with you. At the top was a brown box, with knobs and bolts and screws, some kind of speaker, and wires at the top like television antennae.

Despite knowing better, I still reached down and picked it up, half-expecting it to electrocute me or something. No pain, but as soon as I wrapped my fingers around it and removed it from its stand, a low chiming sound emitted from the speaker. I jumped and nearly dropped the damn thing, even though the noise had been quiet.

"Okay. Interesting." I stared at it. "And weird." For now, I simply shoved it in the back of my pants, so I didn't have to carry it. It continued periodically making those tolling-of-a-bell sounds, which was growing annoying, but I tried my best to ignore it.

I raised my hands to rub my arms, shivering, and suddenly my ears picked up on a familar crackling noise. I turned once more, and this time I was faced with a chest sitting beside a roaring campfire. I would have felt better about this if the chest wasn't so dangerously close to the flames. Luckily, it hadn't caught fire yet.

Since I was already chilled to the bone, I wasted no time in getting to the campfire, though I was much more wary about the chest. Something about this just seemed... off. Maxwell had not helped me at all, in the previous world that I'd landed in. There had been no helpful chests at the start. I had to figure everything out on my own.

"Maybe the chest is empty," I mused. "...But, somehow, I doubt that. That accursed man doesn't seem to do things without reason."

After a minute or two of indecision, I finally reached out and opened it, wincing as I did. I'd really been expecting some kind of mutant to jump out at me, but to my surprise, there were a few materials in the chest. Actually, more than a few - the chest was quite full.

I carefully gathered everything into my arms, and then laid out all of my new treasures on the ground. There were seven logs of wood, three pieces of flint, and a thick woolen hat. I was especially puzzled by the hat. Had someone been in this world before me?

"No... no, it doesn't quite feel like that." Cautiously, I reached out and tucked the hat onto my head, flattening my ever-defiant hair. "I suppose Maxwell doesn't want me to die right off the bat. He'd rather watch me suffer. It is winter in this world, after all. This might be significantly harder."

 _Let's try something a little more challenging, shall we?_

I looked towards the sky, and was startled to see that the sun was already nearing the horizon. No time to waste; it would be dusk soon, and then it would be dark.

I had learned the dangers of being in the dark in this world the hard way. I didn't really know what to call it, the monster that only seemed to attack in pitch darkness. In my mind, I had simply called the creature... It. And It was hungry.

"Enough of that. Get your head out of the clouds and get moving, Wilson."

Okay, now I was scolding myself. Maybe this self-talk wasn't completely healthy. But so far, it was keeping me from _totally_ losing my mind, so I wasn't going to stop.

At any rate. I climbed to my feet, warmed my hands by the fire one last time, and then set off to start gathering. There seemed to be plenty of trees, tall grass and twigs around, but I wasn't seeing any carrots or berries. Worse, the birch trees were bare, undoubtedly due to the seasonal change. No nuts to pick and roast over the fire.

And there hadn't been any food in that chest.

 **(A/N: That was quicker than I'd anticipated. I'm planning on starting Chapter 3 right away, so you guys might get yet another update today. Hope you guys enjoyed. Please leave feedback! Any comments, questions or suggestions will be GREATLY appreciated.)**


	4. Chapter 3: What the Hell are Those

**Chapter 3: What the Hell are those Penguin Things**

Fortunately, I was able to find a few carrots relatively quickly, but still no berry bushes. That was mildly concerning, since the bushes would grow back, while the carrots would not. It wasn't like I had any carrot seeds to plant. Then again, considering it was winter, any berry bushes might not grow back anyway... that was even more concerning.

In the span of perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, I had acquired a decent stack of grass and twigs, though my hands were growing numb from digging around in the snow. I was just kneeling beside the coast (did I mention that the world Maxwell had sent me to seemed to be on an inescapable island? Yeah, that's fun), reaching for another sapling when suddenly something leapt out of the water in front of me and struck me right in the face, bowling me over.

My little pile of grass and twigs that I'd been carrying went flying in all directions, as I flailed my arms and shoved the squirming _thing_ from my face. The thing made a heavy plopping sound as it hit the ground, and for a moment I thought it was some kind of big black ball. But then, it lifted itself up on two clawed feet, shook itself, and blinked up at me, looking rather annoyed.

It was some kind of animal, and it _almost_ looked like it could be a penguin, but it had an absurdly long beak, like a pelican. Like every other creature I'd seen so far, it had large white eyes, with no pupils. Perhaps a side-effect of the weird mutation that was clearly going on.

The penguin/pelican creature ruffled up its wet feathers, and then squawked back at the water. I let out a squeal and fell back as several more penguins, at least five or six, came leaping from the sea after the first. They squawked at each other for a minute or two, flapping their little flippers and waddling around, before they all began toddling off in a seemingly random direction.

I blinked after them. Well, those penguin - things - had nearly given a heart attack, but they hadn't attacked me, at least. I wasn't dead yet.

Glancing at the sky once more, I noticed the sun had slipped below the horizon, and the light of the day was slowly draining away. It was officially dusk. Quickly, I snatched up my gatherings, and kept on going. I intended to make the most of my first day here, and I still only had three carrots. Berries would be good to find. Or at least a few more carrots. I wasn't hungry yet, but I would be later.

That was a certainty.

 **oXoXoXoXoXo**

After another ten minutes or so, I had bad news, and more bad news.

First, I still had not found any berries bushes. Or any more carrots, for that matter.

Second (and this was significantly worse), I had found a spider's nest. Actually, _two_ spider nests. And, since the creatures appeared to be nocturnal and since it was dusk, there were several way-too-big spiders crawling around the area, which was making it considerably more difficult to gather supplies. I tried my best to give them a wide berth, and they actually seemed quite nearsighted, so I went unnoticed. I wasn't sure if they'd attack me the moment they saw me, but they certainly looked unfriendly.

I had also found another animal's home - the penguin/pelican things. They had all congregated in a particularly icy spot on the ground, surrounded by little glaciers of ice. Speaking of which, the glaciers were incredibly strange. They were somewhat like small icebergs, but they had formed on the _ground,_ not on the ocean. I couldn't figure them out.

It's worth noting that the penguins' home was right beside the spiders'. They were nearly overlapping, in fact. I wondered if I would get to see the two mutants fight.

While watching the oversized spiders and hybrid penguins, I hadn't really realized how cold I was getting. At least, not until I reached to pick a tuft of grass and noticed my fingers were too numb to work.

Hurriedly, I stumbled back to where I'd found the chest and the campfire. The fire had gone out by then; I hadn't put any more logs on it to keep it going, not wanting the chest to catch flame. I grabbed up a few logs, and by then I could recognize the early signs of hypothermia starting to set it, my brain feeling sluggish and disagreeable, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.

With some difficulty, I began to build another fire - considerably farther away from the chest this time. It wasn't like the chest itself was of much importance, now that I'd taken the items out of it, but I thought it'd be good to keep something to store my gatherings in. I couldn't carry everything around with me, after all. In the previous world (and, yes, I really did think it had been a completely different world, it was autumn there), I hadn't gathered enough stuff to necessitate building a chest or digging some kind of hole to put it all in. But if I was going to be staying here, I would probably end up needing some sort of storage space.

Eventually, I was able to get a fire going, even though I couldn't feel my hands or feet, and simply sat for a little while, warming myself. I didn't want to stay at the fire too long, though. I wanted to find more food before nightfall. I was not satisfied with three carrots.

I shook out my fingers and wriggled my toes inside my boots, the familiar pins-and-needles feeling spreading across my skin. Satisfied that I had staved off my hypothermia, I got to my feet, tossed another log in the flames, and went to take a step.

And promptly tripped over a spider.

I went tumbling to the ground, letting out a pained _"Oof!"_ as I hit the packed dirt chest-first and knocked the air out of my own lungs. Gasping, I scrambled away, crawling forward like a snake on its belly, legs flailing as I struggled to put distance between myself and the mutant arachnid.

Behind me, I could hear it hissing, a low, gargling sound that was unlike anything I'd ever heard before in my life. It wasn't the first time I'd noticed them make those noises, but this particular hiss sounded much, much more aggressive than ever before. I turned my head, and while I wish I could say I did not let out an embarrassingly high-pitched squeal when I saw the creature crawling furiously forward with its teeth bared, I'd be lying if I did.

I staggered up to my feet, clumsily brushing snow from my clothes as I bolted out of there. I was in no mood to tango with giant insectoids of any sort. And as I ran, panting and shivering both from the cold and from fear, I noticed something even more horrifying.

The damn spiders were _everywhere._

 **(A/N: Hello, my lovelies! Third chapter is here. In complete and total honesty, I'm dissatisfied with how the story is currently coming along. It feels... dry, to me. Hopefully, it'll get better as the plot progresses. Also, fun fact: Whilst playing Adventure Mode to write this chapter, some pengulls did indeed jump out of the ocean, and startled me quite a bit. I decided to incorporate my little scare into the story.)**


	5. Chapter 4: Skeletons and Tallbirds

**Chapter 4** **: Skeletons and Tallbirds**

Behind me, there was a terrifying amount of hissing, spitting noises, and I didn't even dare to look back. I simply continued to run, my boots stumbling and slipping in the snow, my lungs feeling like they were being impaled with each step. The light of the day was draining fast, and it was getting harder and harder to see where I was going. Once or twice, I fell, banging my knees and elbows on the hard ground, but I hardly felt it in my panic.

There was one thing I did notice clearly, even with most of the sunlight gone; there were three of those giant spider nest things, relatively close together. They weren't that big, I'd seen bigger, but with _three_ of them all in the same area? There was a ridiculous amount of spiders crawling around. And now there was a ridiculous amount chasing me. Brilliant. Just... brilliant.

I wasn't sure how far I ran before I finally slowed to the stop, bending over and panting. I finally chanced a glance over my shoulder, and thank God, I didn't see any massive spider hoards coming for me. They must have gotten bored. I hadn't been sure if they were gone or not, since the ringing in my ears had overpowered the noise of their hissing. I was _not_ in any shape to be running like this. Again: I was a goddamn scientist, not an adventurer.

Still struggling to catch my breath, I looked up - and immediately, my eye caught something that lifted my mood greatly. Berry bushes. Okay, I still would have preferred not getting chased by spiders to finding berries, but... small victories.

I brushed dirt and snow from my clothes as I trotted over to the bushes, frowning down at my soiled garments. I'd been wearing them for about, oh, five days now, perhaps? Counting the day I'd finished building Maxwell's Godforsaken machine. They weren't filthy, exactly, but I still felt extremely unclean in them. Maybe when spring came (assuming there were normal seasons in this world...), I could wash them in a pond or river.

Quietly I surveyed the area, as I pulled berries into my half-numbed fingers. There was another den of those penguin hybrids, as well as another (shudder) spider nest, off a little further away. Luckily, those spiders weren't wandering too close to me, yet, and I did not intend to go anywhere near them.

"Just keep moving, Wilson, just keep moving," I grumbled. There was still a painful stitch in my side.

I did find it a tad strange, how the bushes still had berries on them during the winter. The shrubs still had all of their leaves, looking just as healthy as they had in the previous world. Even if the bushes were evergreen, I couldn't think of any evergreen that bore fruit in wintertime. Not any edible fruit, anyway.

Stowing the berries away in my pocket, I continued gathering for a few minutes more, casting nervous glances up at the sky ever so often. I would need a torch or campfire soon. My fire would still be burning, the one I made back near the chest, but with all of those spiders, I wasn't keen on bunking there for the night.

"Maybe I should go ahead and make a torch now," I said with a frown. "Better safe than sorry, with It out there."

A nearby penguin seemed to be looking at me strangely as I spoke to myself, as if questioning my sanity. I glared at it, offended, mostly because I was questioning my own sanity as well. As if in response, it turned and waddled back to its group.

I sighed, and reached into my other pocket, grabbing a handful of twigs and grass. I knelt down, intending to start rubbing the twigs together to start a flame - and then abruptly dropped the twigs as I caught sight of something else. This time, it was a considerably less pleasant sight than berry bushes.

It was a skeleton.

A full, human skeleton, just lying there on the ground, on its back. I took a step away on instict. A deep chill ran down my spine, and in spite of the frigid air, I still swore I could feel my blood turn to ice.

I probably wouldn't have approached it at all, but then I noticed something sitting next to it, something with a very odd shape. I chewed on my lower lip for a long-held moment, but finally, my scientist's curiosity won out over my fear. Slowly, cautiously, I crept towards the corpse, and knelt beside it, trying to ignore the incredible skin-crawling feeling I was getting.

It was... a vest of some kind. It had a black-and-white checkered pattern, and (as I hesitantly reached out to touch it), it was quite soft. Though there were no sleeves, it looked like it would be warm. If this were the real world, I would not, under any circumstances, take a random piece of clothing that, presumably, belonged to a long-dead skeleton on the ground. But it was winter, and I was freezing, and there was a perfectly good vest, and I was not an idiot.

Wincing, I slowly picked up the vest, shaking a bit of snow off of it. I took a couple large steps away from the corpse, tucking the shirt under one arm. I gave the skeleton one last, long, nervous look, then hurried back over to where I'd dropped the twigs. It would be dark in a few minutes. I couldn't waste any more time.

I tried my best to concentrate on making the torch, but my mind was whirling, and I could still see the skeleton in my mind's eye. There were two possibilities about where that could have came from. Either there had been people here before me... long, long before me... or, Maxwell was simply screwing with my head. I wasn't sure which option was worse. I didn't like to think of what could have possibly killed that person - starvation, the cold, a monster, or God knows what else. But on the other hand, the idea that Maxwell was just casually dropping skeletons about the place, and who knows _how_ he was getting those skeletons...

The end of the tuft of grass I was holding suddenly burst aflame, and my shaking fingers nearly dropped it. I swore and gritted my teeth, struggling to clear my thoughts. I had only been here for a day, in this new, wintry world. I couldn't start going crazy already.

"Wilson, I'm starting to think you've been crazy all along," I sighed.

 **oXoXoXoXoXo**

I blinked against the blinding sunlight in my face, jerking myself suddenly upright. I shook snow from my sleeves, flexed my numb fingers. When had I fallen asleep? I just remembered setting my torch aside and taking a brief rest, and now I was waking up. It seemed running from those spiders had exhausted me. Not to mention the mental exhaustion that came after seeing that skeleton.

Groaning, I got to my feet, shivering from head to toe. Sleeping in a pile of snow was not fun. I grabbed up the vest and pulled it over my head, trying very hard to pretend I wasn't creeped out by it. It did help block out the cold, so that cheered me a bit.

I pulled out a few berries to start munching on, and as I did so, I suddenly heard a high-pitched squawk, sounding vaguely like a... bird. But it was very, very different from the squawks of the penguins. Frowning, I turned my head in the direction of the odd noise, and abruptly choked on my mouthful of fruit.

You'd think by this point, I'd be used to seeing weird mutated animals. But you have to understand; all of the incredible strangeness that I'd seen prior to this, every surreal moment of it... none of it could even begin to compare to what I was seeing now.

It... was vaguely bird-like in appearance, yes. But only vaguely. It wasn't like any bird I'd ever seen before, that was for damn sure. The first thing I noticed were the legs, of course, considering that they were _over twice the length of my entire body._ It was like you took giraffe legs, dyed them black and stuck them on a giant bird head. Except, get this, the bird only had one eye. One _huge_ eye. The eye actually took up about ninety percent of its head. On both sides of that large, round head, were a pair of comically small wings. I'm not sure what purpose they served, because the monstrous thing clearly could not fly. There was no way those wings were getting that enormous body off of the ground, not in this century. I might not have recognized it as being bird-like at all if it hadn't had a large beak underneath its single eye, dull purple in color.

I couldn't help but just stare at it. Just... stood there, and stared. The creature was a frightening sight by itself. But that wasn't really the most frightening thing.

No, the frightening thing was when I realized there were four of them.

"Well." I straightened the collar of my newly-acquired vest. "That's something you don't see every day."

 **(A/N: And here's Chapter 4. I hope you all are enjoying, my lovelies. I was considerably more pleased with this than with Chapter 3. Again, pleeeeease leave comments and criticism! Good or bad, anything you have to say!)**


	6. Update 2

**A/N:** Hello, my lovelies! I simply wanted to drop an update, saying I'm sorry that I haven't posted a chapter in over a week. I've been so busy lately. But, good news: I'm going to try my best to get Chapter 5 written by tomorrow. I can't promise it'll be there, since I'll be babysitting tomorrow, but I will definitely work on it and try to get it finished for you guys.

Also, I am so pleased with all of the positive feedback I've received so far! Thank you so much for your kind reviews. Please, continue to leave your comments, suggestions and criticisms, whether it be positive or negative. Check back tomorrow, lovelies! I adore you all!


	7. Chapter 5: I Am One Heck of a Scientist

**Chapter 5** **:** I Am One Heck of a Scientist.

Now, normally, when one sees several giant mutated bird-like monstrosities, their first instinct would be to turn tail and book it in the other direction.

However, that wasn't the only thing I noticed, when I looked towards them. Past the four nests (which, I observed, each had a blue, speckled egg the size of my head sitting in them), there was a large field of rocks. And indeed, I noticed that some of these boulders appeared to have glimmers of bright yellow in them, which could easily mean gold.

I _did_ consider the fact that this really wasn't how gold naturally occurred in the world, in large, arbitrary boulders on a flat plain aboveground. But this new dimension I was in clearly didn't adhere to the principles of the world I'd come from, so I didn't worry about it too much. It was also possible that it might have been fool's gold, but there was only one way to find out.

Why was I interested in this rock field, you might ask? After all, I was the only human being in this dimension, it seemed. Gold had no monetary value to me. But actually, that isn't what I was thinking about at all.

Remember: I am a scientist, and a damned good one at that, if I do say so myself. Even simple materials such as stone could be used to craft into bigger things. Better tools, perhaps. And gold? I could use gold for _so_ many things. So many things, I can't even begin to list all of the possibilities that popped into my head.

As I began to move slowly, nervously, towards the birds, I made two assumptions. First: I thought, perhaps, they might be as nearsighted as the spiders. It wasn't like the other creatures I'd seen, which had white eyes and no pupil; these tall birds did, in fact, have a large pupil in their singular eye, surrounded by a yellow iris. It actually had an uncanny similarity to a human eye. But even still, maybe all of the mutants behaved similarly? It wasn't exactly a stretch, in this strange world.

Second: I thought that they may have not even been hostile at all. As long as I kept my distance from their nests, perhaps they would simply ignore me, allowing me to pass harmlessly by.

As it turns out, I was wrong on both accounts. They had a _much_ wider field of view than the spiders. And they were quite hostile.

 _"AAAAAAAUUUGGGHHHH!"_

Whilst running from the four chasing mutants, it took me awhile to realize that the horrid scream I was hearing was coming from my own mouth. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I am not an adventurer.

I had no idea how I managed to outrun them, considering they had infinitely taller legs than my own. When I finally collapsed behind a boulder, panting and shaking, and peeked out to watch them from afar, I noticed that they actually moved a bit clumsily. Not so much so that they were in danger of randomly falling over, but still. It was much like watching a person on stilts, who was still trying to learn how to walk with them.

After the four of them had returned to their nests, I allowed myself a moment's rest. On the bright side, at least the exercise had warmed me up for the time being. Not to mention I was sweating buckets from fear alone.

However, soon the fear and trauma gave way to unbearable amounts of excitement. I had made it to the rock field; I had endless amounts of stone and gold to work with. What should I create first, to aid me in surviving this harsh landscape?

Well, first I would need to actually _get_ to the materials. I got to my feet, and closely examined the boulder I'd been sitting beside. My heart jumped. That was definitely _not_ iron pyrite. It was gold. So it was definitely worth mining down these rocks, as well.

The only problem being I was without a pickaxe.

But I had flint, and I had a few sturdy sticks. As I sat down cross-legged on the ground, and began pulling out my materials, I figured that it would be a good idea to make an axe sometime soon as well. The seven logs that that been in that strange chest were down to two or three now. But for now, I took two large pieces of flint in my hand, gritted my teeth, and began to strike the pieces together roughly. Once. Twice. Thrice. Again... and again... and again.

 **oXoXoXoXoXo**

By the time I'd finished making my pickaxe, it was sundown and I was chilled to the bone. Most of the time had been spent hitting the flint against oneanother to get them sharp enough. Still, I was positively _giddy_. I was getting somewhere. I was building tools, and soon I'd be able to build things from stone and gold.

I tugged on the more flexible pieces of twig that I'd tied around the flint, making sure it was secure. Then, I grabbed the makeshift handle (a thin log), swung it back over my shoulder, and smashed the pointed end of the flint against the nearest boulder. Hard.

Lucky for me, the rock wasn't _too_ tough, and it began to give way after a few hits, crumbling into smaller pieces. It was hard work, not to mention time-consuming, and when the boulder was finally nothing but small chunks on the ground, my arms were shaking something awful, and the last of the sun's rays were beginning to disappear below the horizon. Panting and shivering in the cold, I used the last of my logs to build a quick fire.

I stared around at the pieces of rock and gold nuggets scattered around my feet, smiling like a kid in a candy store. I decided I wanted a bit more of these resources before I got to work crafting anything, but that could wait until the morning. I needed a break, anyway.

I warmed myself by the fire for awhile, then lied down on my side, pulling my arms inside of my vest and shirt. My body ached too much to sleep - even being a scientist, I wasn't _quite_ used to so much physical exertion - but I wasn't much interested in sleep, anyway. Those bird creatures were still rather close, not to mention the fact that I could hear the telltale sounds of spider hissing.

As I lied there, no longer involved with any hard labor or getting chased by mutants, I started to notice something. At first, I didn't hear it, with the sound of the crackling fire so close, but as time passed, I realized the noise was not in my imagination.

It was the strange contraption I had picked up in the beginning. I'd kept it with me, and the soft chiming noise it emitted every so often had become simple background noise, something I no longer paid attention to. But now - it was definitely louder than it had been before. Very slightly higher in pitch, as well. It would take someone with good ears to notice it, but luckily, I had good ears.

Frowning, I removed it from my pants and held it in front of me, tilting it one way and then the other. A soft chime... silence for ten seconds or so... another soft chime. My curiosity sparked, and I got painfully to my feet, slowly beginning to pace back and forth as I observed it. What had caused it to suddenly grow louder?

After a minute or so, I froze mid-step. Had it gotten softer again? I furrowed my brows, standing there for a moment. And then it hit me.

I turned, and took several large steps in the opposite direction. And waited.

The chime came again. _Louder._

It was a homing device.

I felt a huge grin break out over my face. It seemed now, I had something else to do in the morning as well.

 **(A/N: Chapter 5 at last! I am so so so sorry this is coming several days later than I said it would. Long story short, things came up. I was quite busy. But I finally got it written for you guys! I hope you like it okay. Again, please leave any comments you have! I love you all!)**


End file.
